Don’t you just love it when you thought you just finished doing a perfect coding job and then go to test it out in Internet Explorer, you find once again that %&$# browser simply does not display what you want it to.

Today is the official day Microsoft released their so-called “final” version of Internet Explorer 8. While I haven’t downloaded it yet, I have used the beta versions and I have to say, even though I have strong opinions about IE, there’s a few features I like about it. No, I don’t mean the InPrivate browsing , what I was referring to is the browsers better support of W3C Standards and parsing bugs that have been an annoyance to coders for too long.

I won’t list all the features of Internet Explorer 8, however, as we all know, Wikipedia is our #1 trusted source, so head over to the link below to read all the features of IE8.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8

Popularity: 51% [?]

Here’s some advice my program director left for me today. It’s something I find very true and believe is something everyone should read:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

Popularity: 44% [?]

In my marketing class, I learned a process by which businesses plan their strategies. I figured this process will help me market websites more efficiently and effectively. So here are the secret steps to success:

1. Define your site’s goal and mission: Ask the question, what is this site supposed to give to the visitor? What benefit will the visitor receive? And most importantly, why should they go here rather than a competitor’s site?
2. Analyze your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT Analysis for all you schoolkids)
   
   • Strengths: Figure out what you have that your competitor’s don’t. This could be as simple as an easier-to-remember domain name, better design, etc.
   • Weaknesses: What do other sites have that you don’t? This will not only help you see where you can improve, but also, how to turn these weaknesses into strengths.
   • Opportunities: What kind of opportunities are coming at your site? There may not be very many, but anything from advertising, getting reviews, etc..
   • Threats: How can competitor’s sites threaten you? Sure they already have traffic and loyal visitors, but how can they seriously hurt your performance?
3. Identify Marketing Opportunities: How can you “get your foot in the door”? For this step look at what specific audience you can target that your competitor is not targeting very well. You can start by targeting a certain age group, a demographic, a culture, or even target certain countries only. The second part is to position yourself so your site clearly answers number one of this entire process when a visitor goes to your site. Because as everyone should know by now, first impressions as usually last impressions.
4. Implement your marketing strategy and use resources: In this step actually go out and get your word out there. The best way to do it is to follow the, what marketer’s call, 4P’s:
   • Product or Service: Position your websites service or products to make the customer’s you are targeting want it. The best way people will return to your site is if they see a need in your service. Therefore, create value in your site.
   • Price: If you’re selling products or offering memberships or paid services, consider your price carefully. It may be beneficial to lower your initial prices to compete against the competition. But then again, you don’t want to become the Wal-Mart of web design, so take that into play as well.
   • Place: This is key. In the real world, you want to create a service in a location where it is readily accessible. In the virtual world, you want to create a site that is also readily accessible. Therefore, downtime, long loading, server hardware are important. Imagine you follow the above steps and you make it to the front page of Digg and you’re on a shared server. There’s a good chance you’ve just pissed off a lot of visitors when your site went down.
   • Promotion: Decide where and how you want to advertise in conjunction with what you’re promoting in the other three P’s above. If its a blog, you can use reviews, banners, blog networks, etc.
5. Evaluate your Performance: If you thought the above four things would turn you into a successful entrepreneur, I’ve got great news. It may, but there’s a fairly high chance that’s not going to happen the first time. So it is vital to track your site and target market and see how you can improve your sites performance as the process rolls by. For many, this process is never ending as websites continuously struggle to increase market-share, develop a strong foundation in their area of expertise, and broaden their horizons.

So that’s basically the plan. If this method works in the real world, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work with the internet world as well.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Recently, I completed another one of my projects I work on in spare time. This time it’s a file-mirror website called UploadBud.com. Although the paid membership system isn’t exactly complete, I figured its about time to start spreading the word around. I don’t have any long term goals for the site other than increasing traffic and revenue. In other words, this is one of those sites that just brings in extra cash. It may also end up being a site I simply flip.

Popularity: 50% [?]

I recently came across an issue when implementing an FTP file upload function via CURL. Because my FTP username was ‘alex@mydomain.com’ I had a hard time connecting because the code would think everything after the @ sign was part of the host – which it obviously wasn’t.

Doing a bit of Google searching I found other newbie coders also had this issue, so here is the solution I created if anyone happens to come here from Google:

$ch = curl_init();
$target3 = "C:/www/upload/".$target2;
$fp = f*open($target3, 'r');
$ftpurl = "ftp.servername.com/";
$ftpusr = urlencode("user@mydomain.com");
$ftppass = "mycrazypassword";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'ftp://'.$ftpusr.':'.$ftppass.'@'.$ftpurl.$target3);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_UPLOAD, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_INFILESIZE, filesize($target3));

**Note: for the fopen function, I had to list it as f*open because it would not let me post it for some reason.

Popularity: 70% [?]

Dealing online these days is a risky business. Which is exactly what this post is about. I’ve dealt with dozens of clients in my internet career and over time, I learned what it is like to do business with those that live half a world away, those that live in the same state as you, and finally those that say they live in one place but instead live somewhere else and are lying to you.

Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way, that not everyone can be trusted. For a while, I had a trust-all mentality which is probably why I have been burned several times along the way. Now, I’m not saying don’t trust your clients; I think it’s a perfectly good idea to embed some form of trust in that person, but BE CAREFUL!! Not everyone seems to be who they are!

Let me give a brief example. Not more than a year ago, I was looking for dedicated web hosting and came across an individual that seemed to provide some fairly decent service.  I talked with him and everything seemed to check out so I sent him half of the payment so that he could set up the server and then we’d continue with the deal. Had I simply Googled his email, I would have found out this guy was a scammer who told various stories in order to get the most out of people. Luckily I only gave this guy a small payment and did research him before giving the entire payment.

Researching clients is also a good way to get a feel of who they are and how they act and talk. Some people tend to be very formal, while others not so formal. Knowing this has helped me set my tone correctly when working with them.

There’s a lot to be said on this topic, but I think that’s enough for now. I apologize for my posting frequency, I know it’s been pretty lame, but I’ll be working to improve it.

Popularity: 41% [?]